Update! Kids' Demand THIS Recorded

So we had so much of the above left over, we had leftovers tonight. I shredded the chicken as it heated, added a smidge of water, and then made a simple cheese sauce (below). We served it with tortilla chips (blue chips, our favorite!), smothered in the cheese sauce.

Slightly More Diet Friendly Cheese Sauce

1/2 cup fat free sour cream
1/4 block Velveeta

Start heating the sour cream over very low heat in a heavy saucepan. Or, better, use a double boiler (I don't have one of these - it's on the List of Things to Get When I Remember). Meanwhile, cut the Velveeta into teeny-tiny chunks - less than 1/2 inch ideally. When the sour cream is bubbly hot, add the Velveeta. Then stir until it's all melted (you don't have to stir as much with a double boiler). Makes about a cup.

Chicken and Chili Beans

Many times I'll go grubbing around in the pantry and freezer and throw something together. Sometimes it gets rave reviews. Sometimes, not so much. The problem with the former is that invariably I forget what I've done (the problem with the latter should be self-evident). Hubby pointed out this blog is a good solution to preserving the randomly-generated successes for future use.

I've been informed by hubby that I must put this one, whipped up last night, on the blog:

Chicken and Chili Beans

2 lbs chicken, boneless thighs or breasts (these you'd cut up into quarters)
2 cloves garlic, diced or just smooshed like I do
2 tbsp olive oil
1 can chili style beans in sauce, not drained
1 can kidney beans, rinsed and drained well
1 tbsp dried cilantro or about 1/4 cup fresh chopped
1 tsp chili powder
1/2 cup hot water or fat free chicken stock
1/4 cup salsa, any style

Heat the oil in a large heavy skillet, on medium and add garlic, saute until golden brown. Add the chicken and saute until opaque, about five minutes each side. Reduce heat slightly and add remaining ingredients except salsa. Cover and simmer, stirring occasionally, for 30 minutes. Add salsa and cook five minutes more, to warm salsa through. Serve with warm tortillas, or over brown rice. This makes lots for four.

This recipe is Core for Weight Watchers, and very low fat and cholesterol for others watching their diets for various reasons. And the kids loved it with the tortillas - especially topped with cheese and sour cream!

A Useful Dog

My standard for what makes a Border Collie, a good Border Collie, is "usefulness." To me, this doesn't mean my dog could do something if he had training, or a better handler, but that he will do it. Usefulness is the opposite concept to letting me down when we're out there working.

I know that many times it's my fault my dog can't do something, or doesn't know to do it, but there are other times when a dog should just be there, keeping contact but not making a mess, and that's all I need. I'm not trying to win the Bluegrass or Soldier Hollow here, just getting sheep from Point A to Point B.

Ted delights me more every day. I know, it's sort of reminding me of the coach who admonished his young athletes against showboating in the end zone: "Act like you've been there." It's still wonderful after so many disappointments, to have a youngster with all the pieces in the right place.

This morning we had a new experience. The newly weaned lambs took a field trip deep into the woods, probably after the poison ivy and other brushy leaves currently at their tasty, tender best. This would be okay with me, but the woods are outside the fence, with the paved state road bordering them, and after they browse their fill, the sheep tend to wander down to my landlord's beautifully landscaped small pond, drink, and then top off with a few of his wife's perennials for dessert.

Ted worked in the woods like there were no woods. He was fantastic (Ack. Act like you've been there.) level headed and found each lamb, plus made sure the mamas with younger lambs all came with as well (and weren't flustered).

The nice thing is that I think this may be the first time that these sheep haven't had the upper hand in the woods. They like to play games with my dogs, who all being hand-me-downs, or trained by me in - ahem - previous years, all have major weaknesses.

The other nice thing is that I think this was my big payoff for all the work we've been doing on fences, in corners, and in the lean-to. Weird pressure was always Ted's Achilles heel, and here it seemed like it was almost the opposite - he really seemed to relax and get into the "busy" nature of the job.

The only bad thing was that he was so "into" it that he was hard to stop and about 50% less obedient. He was handling things just fine on his own most of the time, but there were a couple times that if he had listened, I could have helped him a bit.

I think we'll do some putting sheep in woods on purpose, in the near future, and see what we can do about that last bit.

I Totally Should Not Be Doing This

I tried the blogging thing several years ago, when you had to explain to most people (meaning all but the geekiest of geeks), what a "blog" was or the meaning of the verb "to blog" (I blog, you blog, thou bloggest, they will have blogged). I didn't like it for a lot of reasons. The blogging sites either offered not enough control over look and feel, or too much, meaning you had to do it all by hand via html. I'm too much of a control freak for the one, and too lazy for the other, to be worth it.

Then a short while ago, I started realizing that my long e-mails about, well, not much, were boring people. It's now de classe to put that sort of thing in personal communications. I could almost hear their thoughts - Why don't you blog instead? Then we could pick and choose what's interesting?

So here we are.

I’m one of those “too much or too little people” - both phases supremely boring to read, I know. So, what my hope is, is to make this as extrospective as possible (though blogging is de facto an expression of introspection, even on external topics). Not to make it less boring, but in the hope that I’ll culture that habit in my thoughts permanently. And that's the last really "me" focused bit I hope to bring here. I have to plead indulgence for spiritual reflections however - this is the inevitable result of writing to a diverse audience.

Plans for the week: I’m working on building Ted’s confidence holding and working with pressure. This paid off many-fold when I had a customer come for a lamb. Ted held them for me for about thirty minutes, largely on auto-pilot, while we yakked and I pulled out one lamb after another to compare and narrow down our choices. It was only when they’d gone that I realized that was his first time doing that, solo, for that length of time. And afterwards, just curious, I took him out to see what doing the “cutting horse” thing for that long had done to his “outwork” - and lo and behold he now has twice as long an outrun, and shows no more than a normal baby dog amount of nervousness on the drive.

Thus, I’ll continue to work on his “at hand” pressure, and play at training trial type stuff pretty much only when others are here - or to set it up for a video. Meanwhile I’m delighted that he will now go out reliably for sheep as far as he really needs to anywhere on this farm, with the exception of the large field. The issue there is less the distance (in sight gathers are around 250 yards now since we fenced the bottom chunk), and mostly the fact that the dog must work out of sight for most gathers.

I'm also going over to the lake twice a day with Bet (except days I'm too busy). She's gotten amazing at spotting geese even before I do. It's hard to see them on the hilly, woods-surrounded lawns since we go when the light is pretty low. The geese have gotten to where she doesn't even have to move, they just go where she can't see them, uplake.